Select All doesn't put the selected text into the selection buffer. This applies to both CTRL+A and the menu/toolbar 'Select All' option. How do I fix this?

In other words, CTRL+A doesn't let me middle click the selected text to anywhere else. It's quite annoying.

Incidentally, the exact same thing happens with Firefox's location bar. The first initial click forces a highlight of the address, but it doesn't get put into the selection buffer. The same applies when you try to CTRL+A it after that. I know this is outside the realm of KDE itself. I'm not trying to hold anybody here responsible for that. I'm just **** about the direction Firefox is going these days and I might as well mention it here since they're deleting any reports and feedback people make about it there.

That seems normal to me, CTLR+C pushes things in the buffer, not CTRL+A which only selects everything

Mamarok wrote:That seems normal to me, CTLR+C pushes things in the buffer, not CTRL+A which only selects everything

That's the clipboard.

What I'm referring to is the selection buffer, sometimes called the primary buffer, primary selection, or primary clipboard. (The names only add to the confusion) I have also seen seen somebody refer to it as "Quick-Copy" but I don't think that name ever took off.

The clipboard is simply referred to as the clipboard.

To understand what I'm talking about, open a text editor that's not Kate, like Kwrite. Put a lot of text into it, then press CTRL+A and middle mouse click anywhere in the text input portion of the window. Everything you just selected should now be copy-pasted, without you explicitly copying it. While your text editor still has focus, press CTRL+V. Whatever was in your clipboard buffer should now be pasted, assuming it was text. You'll notice the two have different contents.

You can experiment with the different programs on your system and I think you'll see that they all support the 'primary selection buffer clipboard quick-copy' function. Kate even still supports it, but only when you select with the mouse, shift+arrow keys, or some means other than CTRL+A or the Select All menu function. Kate only has partial support.

The only programs I've found that don't support it with CTRL+A is Kate and GIMP. And it makes sense with GIMP because there's only one tool in there that does anything at all with text, and it still supports the selection buffer through other means of selection, such as selecting text with the mouse. You just can't paste into GIMP with middle mouse click because that's what drags the work area around.

Maybe the option " keep the selection and clipboard the same" should change something?